Family history Ancestry site down for hours

Ancestry.com and international websites not working

Family history online giant Ancestry was down for several hours this morning, across all its global sites.

UPDATED: The problem was eventually resolved around 10am BST.

The Ancestry website has been out of service since at least 6am BST when Ancestry.com announced on Twitter: “We are aware of the site outages right now. We apologize for any inconvenience and working to resolve the issue. We'll let you know as soon as everything is back online.”

On the Ancestry site there’s a message “We are undergoing maintenance or resolving some errors. We apologize for the inconvenience and ask for your patience at this time.”

The company’s subsidiary Rootsweb.com website is unaffected.

Most Ancestry.com users have been patient with the family history site but there are some that complain this is not an isolated outage problem.

"This is a common occurrence for me every night. It just seems to be happening a little earlier than usual! I have been complaining to Ancestry for several months now. This happens every night/morning. Most people aren't researching during these hours so many probably don't notice it" moaned one Ancestry user on the site's Facebook page.

Other users denied this.

Ancestry is the largest online provider of genealogical data, with 2 million paying subscribers, and operating a network of historical record websites focused on ten countries including the US, Ancestry UK, Australia, Canada, and China.